No More Learning

Each of his Tooke
enned from him, like the tale of the Ancient Marine", by
wy my. The early bocks exerted the wrath of his conferape-
when they were not ridiculed as the grotesque on pourings of
Centric humorist. His teaching was intended to oppose what
ge, le take to be the general tendency of thought, and yet
Who share that tendency gladly acknowledge that they owe to
If
THOMAS CARLYLE
41795 Les)
BY LESLIE STEPH'N


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17443 MRLYLE


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3231
THOMAS CARLYLE
(1795-1881)
BY LESLIE STEPHEN
HE hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Carlyle —
(December 4th, 1795)—was lately commemorated. The
house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which he had occupied
from 1834 till his death (February 4th, 1881), was handed over to
trustees to be preserved as a public memorial. No house in the
British islands has more remarkable associations. Thither Carlyle
had come in his thirty-eighth year, still hardly recognized by the
general public, though already regarded by a small circle as a man
of extraordinary powers. There he went through the concluding
years of the long struggle which ended by a hard-won and scarcely
enjoyed victory. There he had been visited by almost all the most
conspicuous men of letters of his time: by Jeffrey, Southey, and J. S.
Mill; by Tennyson and Browning, the greatest poets, and by Thack-
eray and Dickens, the greatest novelists of his generation; by the
dearest friends of his youth, Irving and Emerson and John Sterling,
and by his last followers, Froude and Ruskin. There too had lived
until 1866 the woman who had shared his struggles, whom he loved
and admired without stint, and whom he was yet destined to remem-
ber with many bitter pangs of remorse. Their story, laid bare with
singular fullness, has invested the scene of their joys and sorrows,
their alienation and reconciliations, with extraordinary interest. Every
one who has read the 'Reminiscences' and the later mass of bio-
graphical matter must be glad to see the "sound-proof» room, and
the garden haunted by the "demon-fowls," and the other dumb wit-
nesses of a long tragi-comedy. No one was so keenly sensitive as
Carlyle to the interest of the little gleams of light which reveal our
ancestors not only stirred by the great passions, but absorbed like
ourselves by the trivialities of the day. A similar interest will long
attach to the scene of his own trials.
Carlyle's life was a struggle and a warfare. Each of his books
was wrenched from him, like the tale of the 'Ancient Mariner,' by a
spiritual agony. The early books excited the wrath of his contempo-
raries, when they were not ridiculed as the grotesque outpourings of
an eccentric humorist. His teaching was intended to oppose what
most people take to be the general tendency of thought, and yet
many who share that tendency gladly acknowledge that they owe to


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3232
Carlyle a more powerful intellectual stimulus than they can attribute
even to their accepted teachers. I shall try briefly to indicate the
general nature of his message to mankind, without attempting to con-
sider the soundness or otherwise of particular views.
Carlyle describes what kind of person people went to see in
Cheyne Row. "The very sound of my voice," he says, "has got
something savage-prophetic: I am as a John the Baptist girt about
with a leather girdle, whose food is locusts and wild honey. " Re-
spectable literary society at "æsthetic tea-parties" regarded him as
the Scribes and Pharisees regarded the Hebrew prophet. He came
among them to tear the mask from their hypocritical cant. Carlyle
was not externally a Diogenes. Though the son of peasants, he had
the appearance and manner of a thorough gentleman in spite of all
his irritable outbreaks. But he was not the less penetrated to the
core with the idiosyncrasies of his class. The father, a Davie Deans
of real life, had impressed the son profoundly. Carlyle had begun
life on the same terms as innumerable young Scots. Strict frugality
had enabled him to get a college training and reach the threshold of
the ministry. His mother could look forward to the exquisite pleas-
ure of seeing "her own bairn wag his head in a pulpit! " But at
this point Carlyle's individuality first asserted itself. He could not
step into any of the ordinary grooves. His college teachers appeared
to him to offer "sawdust» instead of manna from heaven. The
sacred formulæ of their ancestral creed had lost their savor. Words
once expressive of the strongest faith were either used to utter the
bigotry of narrow pedants, or were adopted only to be explained away
into insipid commonplace. Carlyle shared the intellectual movement
of his time too much to profess any reverence for what he called
the "Hebrew old-clothes. " Philosophers and critics had torn them
to rags.
His quarrel however was with the accidental embodiment,
not with the spirit of the old creeds. The old morality was ingrained
in his very nature; nor was he shocked, like some of his fellows, by
the sternness of the Calvinistic views of the universe and life. The
whole problem was with him precisely to save this living spirit.
The skeptics, he thought, were, in the German phrase, "emptying out
the baby with the bath. " They were at war with the spirit as well
as with the letter; trying to construct a Godless universe; to substi-
tute a dead mechanism for the living organism; and therefore to
kill down at the root every noble aspiration which could stimulate
the conscience, or strengthen a man to bear the spectacle of the
wrongs and sufferings of mankind.
The crisis of this struggle happened in 1821. After giving up the
ministry, Carlyle had tried "schoolmastering," and found himself to
be least fitted of mankind for a function which demands patience


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3233
with stupidity. He had just glanced at the legal profession only to
be disgusted with its chicaneries. Hack authorship was his only
chance. The dyspeptic disorder which tormented him through life
was tormenting him. "A rat was gnawing at the pit of his stom-
ach. " Then he was embittered by the general distress of his own
class. Men out of work were threatening riots and the yeomanry
being called out to suppress them. Carlyle was asked by a friend
why he too did not come out with a musket. "Hm! yes," he
replied, "but I haven't quite settled on which side. " It was while
thus distracted, that after three weeks of sleeplessness he experi-
enced what he called his "conversion. " The universe had seemed to
him "void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility; it was
one huge and immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on in its dead
indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh, the vast, gloomy,
solitary Golgotha and mill of death! " And then he suddenly re-
solved to resist. Why go on trembling like a coward? "As I so
thought, there rushed a stream of fire over my whole soul, and I
shook base fear away from me for ever. I was strong, of unknown
strength; a spirit; almost a god: ever from that time the temper of
my misery was changed; not fear or whining sorrow was in it, but
indignation and grim, fell-eyed defiance. " These are the phrases of
his imaginary hero in Sartor Resartus. In the 'Reminiscences' he
repeats the statement in his own person. He had won "an immense
victory »; he had escaped from the "foul mud gods" and soared into
the "eternal blue of ether" where he had "for the spiritual part
ever since lived. " He could look down upon his fellow creatures
still weltering in that fatal element," "pitying the religious part
of them and indignant against the frivolous "; enjoying an inward
and supreme happiness which still remained to him, though often
"eclipsed" in later years.
«<
To understand this crisis is to understand his whole attitude.
The change was not of the purely logical kind. Carlyle was not
converted by any philosophical system. Coleridge, not long before,
had found in Kant and Schelling an answer to similar perplexities.
Carlyle, though he respected the German metaphysicians, could never
find their dogmas satisfactory to his shrewd Scottish sense. His
great helper, he tells us, in the strait, was not Kant but Goethe.
The contrast between that serene prophet of culture and the rugged
Scottish Puritan is so marked that one may be tempted to explain
the influence partly by personal accident. Carlyle grew up at a time
when the British public was just awaking to the existence of Ger-
many; and not only promoted the awakening but was recognized
by the great Goethe himself. He may well have been inclined in
years to exaggerate a debt due to so welcome a recognition.
later
VI-203


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3234
And yet it is intelligible that in Goethe, Carlyle saw what he most
required. A man of the highest genius and a full representative of
the most advanced thought could yet recognize what was elevating
in the past as clearly as what was the true line of progress for us to
pursue; and while casting aside the dead trappings as decidedly as
Carlyle, could reach serene heights above the petty controversies
where men wrangled over extinct issues. Goethe had solved the
problem which vexed Carlyle's soul, and set an inspiring example of
the true spirit and its great reward.
Carlyle, however, was not qualified by temperament or mental
characteristics to follow Goethe's steps. If not primarily a reasoner,
and too impatient perhaps for slow logical processes, he was also
not a poet. Some of the greatest English teachers of his period
embodied their conceptions of the world in poetry. Wordsworth and
Shelley and Byron, in particular, were more effective representatives
of the chief spiritual influences of the day than the few speculative
writers. Carlyle thought for a time that he could utter himself in
verse, or at least in prose fiction. He tried, only to feel his incom-
petence. As Froude observes, he had little ear for metrical composi-
tion. There were other and perhaps greater obstacles. A poet must
be capable of detachment from the actual world in which he lives,
however profound his interest in its great problems. He must be
able to dwell with "seraph contemplation" and stand aside from
the actual contest. To Carlyle such an attitude was partly impos-
sible, partly contemptible. He had imbibed the Puritan aversion to
æsthetic enjoyments. He had been brought up in circles where
it was thought wrong for a child to read the 'Arabian Nights,' and
where Milton could only obtain a doubtful admission as a versifier of
the Scriptural narrative. Carlyle retained
Carlyle retained the prejudice. He always
looked askance at poetry which had no immediate bearing upon con-
duct, and regarded "æsthetic" as equivalent to frivolous. "May the
devil fly away with the fine arts" is a sentiment which he quotes
with cordial sympathy. This view was congenial to his inborn char-
acteristics.
One striking peculiarity was his extraordinary "receptivity" of all
outward impressions. The strange irritability which he set down to
the "hag Dyspepsia" made him resemble a patient in whom disease
has produced a morbidly excessive sensibility. Little annoyances
were magnified into tragic dimensions. The noises in a next-door
house affected him as an earthquake might affect others. His
memory was as retentive as his impressions were strong. Froude
testifies that his account of a little trip to Paris, written forty years
later without reference to memoranda, is verified down to the
minutest details by contemporary letters. Scenes instantaneously


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3235
photographed on his memory never faded. No one had a keener
eye for country. When he visited Germany he brought back pictures
of the scenes of Frederick's battles, which enabled him to reproduce
them with such startling veracity that after reading you seem to
remember the reality, not the book. In history he seeks to place
before us a series of visions as distinct as actual eyesight: to show
us Cromwell watching the descent of the Scottish army at Dunbar,
or the human whirlpool raging round the walls of the Bastille. We
-the commonplace spectators - should not, it is true, even at
present see what was visible to Carlyle, any more than we see a
landscape as Turner saw it. We may wish that we could.
At any
rate, we have the conviction of absolute truthfulness to the impres-
sion made on a powerful idiosyncrasy. We perceive, as by the help
of a Rembrandt, vast chaotic breadths of gloomy confusion, with
central figures thrown out by a light of extraordinary brilliancy.
Carlyle, indeed, always has it in mind that what we call reality is
but a film on the surface of mysterious depths. We are such stuff,
to repeat his favorite quotation, as dreams are made of. Past
history is a series of dreams; the magic of memory may restore
them for an instant to our present consciousness. But the most
vivid picture of whatever is not irrecoverably lost always brings, too,
the pathetic sense that we are after all but ephemeral appearances
in the midst of the eternities and infinities. Overwhelmed by this
sense of the unsubstantiality even of the most real objects, Carlyle
clutches, as it were with the energy of despair, every fading image;
and tries to invest it with something of its old brightness. Carlyle was
so desirous to gain this distinctness of vision that he could not be
happy in personal descriptions till, if possible, he had examined the
portrait of his hero and satisfied himself that he could reproduce the
actual bodily appearance. The face, he holds, shows the soul. And
then his shrewd Scottish sagacity never deserts him. If the hero
sometimes becomes, like most heroes, a little too free from human
infirmities, the actors in his dramas never become mere walking
gentlemen. In Dryasdust he gives us lay figures, bedizened at
times with shallow paradoxes; but Carlyle always deals in genuine
human nature. His judgment may not be impartial, but at least it
is not nugatory. He sees the man from within and makes him a
credible individual, not a mere bit of machinery worked by colorless
formulæ. With this eye for character goes the keen sense of grim
humor which keeps him in touch with reality. Little incidents bring
out the absurd side of even the heroic. The most exciting scenes
of his 'French Revolution' are heightened by the vision of the
shivering usher who "accords the grand entries" when the ferocious
mob is rushing into the palace-not "finding it convenient," as


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3236
THOMAS CARLYLE
-
Carlyle observes, "to refuse them"; and of the gentleman who
continues for an hour to "demand the arrestment of knaves and
dastards" — a most comprehensive of all known petitions. Carlyle's
"mannerism" is one result of this strain to be graphic. It has been
attributed to readings of Jean Paul, and by Carlyle himself, partly
to Irving and partly to the early talk in his father's home. It
appears at any rate as soon as Carlyle gets confidence enough in
himself to trust to his own modes of impression; and if it may fairly
be called a mannerism, was not an affectation. It was struck out in
the attempt to give most effective utterance to his genuine thought,
and may be compared, as Burke said of Johnson's conversation, to the
"contortions of the Sibyl. "
It is time, however, to try to say what was the prophetic message
thus delivered. Carlyle, I have said, had no logical system of phi-
losophy, and was too much of a "realist" (in one sense) to find
poetry congenial. He has to preach by pictures of the past; by
giving us history, though history transfused with poetry; an account
of the external fact which shall reveal the real animating principle,
quietly omitted by statisticians and constitutional historians. The
doctrine so delivered appears to be vague. What, the ordinary
believer may ask, would be left of a religion if its historical state-
ments should turn out to be mere figments and its framework of
dogmas to be nonsense? He would naturally reply, Nothing. Carlyle
replies, Everything. The spirit may survive, though its whole visible
embodiment should be dissolved into fiction and fallacy. But to
define this spirit is obviously impossible. It represents a tone of
thought, a mode of contemplating life and the world, not any dis-
tinct set of definite propositions. Carlyle was called a "mystic," and
even, as he says, was made into a "mystic school. " We may accept
the phrase, so far as mysticism means the substitution of a "logic of
the heart" for a "logic of the head"-an appeal to sentiment rather
than to any definite reasoning process. The "mystic" naturally
recognizes the inner light as shining through many different and
even apparently contradictory forms. But most mystics retain, in a
new sense perhaps, the ancient formulæ. Carlyle rejected them so
markedly that he shocked many believers, otherwise sympathetic.
His early friend Irving, who tried to restore life to the old forms,
and many who accepted Coleridge as their spiritual guide, were
scandalized by his utterances. He thought, conversely, that they
were still masquerading in "Hebrew old-clothes,» or were even
like the apes who went on chattering by the banks of the Dead Sea,
till they ceased to be human. He regards the "Oxford movement"
with simple contempt. His dictum that Newman had "no more
brain than a moderate-sized rabbit" must have been followed, as no


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3237
one will doubt who heard him talk, by one of those gigantic explos-
ions of laughter which were signals of humorous exaggeration. But
it meant in all seriousness that he held Newman to be reviving
superstitions unworthy of the smallest allowance of brain.
Yet Carlyle's untiring denunciation of "shams" and " unrealities"
of this, as of other varieties, does not mean unqualified antipathy.
He feels that the attempt to link the living spirit to the dead ex-
ternals is a fatal enterprise. That may be now a stifling incum-
brance, which was once the only possible symbol of a living belief.
Accordingly, though Carlyle's insistence upon the value of absolute
intellectual truthfulness is directed against this mode of thought, his
attack upon the opposite error is more passionate and characteristic.
The Sartor Resartus,' his first complete book (1833-4), announced
and tried to explain his "conversion. " To many readers it still
seems his best work, as it certainly contains some of his noblest
passages. It was unpopular in England, and (an Englishman must
say it with regret) seems to have been first appreciated in America.
It gave indeed many sharp blows at English society: it expresses his
contempt for the upper literary strata, who like Jeffrey complained
of him for being so "desperately in earnest "; and for the authors,
who were not "prophets," but mere caterers to ephemeral amuse-
ment. But the satire, I cannot but think, is not quite happy. The
humor of the "Clothes Philosophy" is a little strained; to me, I
confess, rather tiresome: and the impressive passages just those
where he forgets it.
His real power became obvious beyond all cavil on the publica-
tion of the 'French Revolution' (1837). Not for a hundred years, he
declared, had the public received any book that " came more direct
and flamingly from the heart of a living man. " That expresses, as
I think, the truth. The book is not to be "read for information. "
The facts would now require much restatement; and moreover, the
narrative is too apt to overleap prosaic but necessary facts in order
to fasten upon the picturesque passages. But considered as what
it is, a "prose epic," a moving panorama, drawn with astonishing
force and perception of the tremendous tragi-comedy involved, it is
unequaled in English literature. The doctrine inculcated is signifi-
cant. Carlyle's sympathies were in one sense with the Revolution.
He felt, he says, that the Radicals were "guild-brothers," while the
Whigs were mere "amateurs. " He was even more thoroughly con-
vinced than the Radicals that a thoroughgoing demolition of the old
order was essential. The Revolution was but the first volcanic out-
burst of the great forces still active below the surface. Europe, he
says (Chartism), lay "hag-ridden" and "quack-ridden. " The quack
is the most hideous of hags; he is a "falsehood incarnate. » To


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3238
THOMAS CARLYLE
blow him and his to the four winds was the first necessity. The
French Revolution was "the inevitable stern end of much: the fear-
ful but also wonderful, indispensable, and sternly beneficent begin-
ning of much. » So far, Carlyle was far more in agreement with
Paine than with Burke. But what was to follow when the ground
was cleared? When you have cut off your king's head and con-
fiscated the estates of the nobility and the church, you have only
begun. A new period is to be born with death-throes and birth-
throes, and there are, he guesses (French Revolution,' Book iv. ,
chapter 4), some two centuries of fighting before "Democracy go
through its dire, most baleful stage of Quackocracy. › » The radi-
cals represent this coming "Quackocracy. " What was their root
error? Briefly (I try to expound, not to enlarge), that they were
materialists. Their aim was low. They desired simply a multipli-
cation of physical comforts, or as he puts it, a boundless supply of
"pigs-wash. " Their means too were futile. Society, on their showing,
was a selfish herd hungering for an equal distribution of pigs-wash.
They put unlimited faith in the mere mechanism of constitution-
mongering; in ballot-boxes and manipulation of votes and contriv-
ances by which a number of mean and selfish passions might be
somehow so directed as to balance each other. It is not by any such
devices that society can really be regenerated. You must raise men's
souls, not alter their conventions. They must not simply abolish
kings, but learn to recognize the true king, the man who has the
really divine right of superior strength and wisdom, not the sham
divine right of obsolete tradition. You require not paper rules, but
a new spirit which spontaneously recognizes the voice of God. The
true secret of life must be to him, as to every "mystic," that we
should follow the dictates of the inner light which speaks in differ-
ent dialects to all of us.
But this implies a difficulty.
Carlyle, spite of his emergence into
"blue ether," was constitutionally gloomy. He was more alive than
any man since Swift to the dark side of human nature. The dull-
ness of mankind weighed upon him like a nightmare. "Mostly
fools" is his pithy verdict upon the race at large. Nothing then
could be more idle than the dream of the revolutionists that the
voice of the people could be itself the voice of God. From millions
of fools you can by no constitutional machinery extract anything but
folly. Where then is the escape? The millions, he says (essay on
Johnson), "roll hither and thither, whithersoever they are led"; they
seem "all sightless and slavish," with little but "animal instincts. "
The hope is that, here and there, are scattered the men of power
and of insight, the heaven-sent leaders; and it is upon loyalty to
them and capacity for recognizing and obeying them that the future


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3239
of the race really depends. This was the moral of the lectures on
'Hero-Worship' (1840). Odin, Mahomet, Dante, Shakespeare, Luther,
Cromwell, and Napoleon, are types of the great men who now and
then visit the earth as prophets or rulers. They are the brilliant
centres of light in the midst of the surrounding darkness; and in
loyal recognition of their claims lies our security for all external
progress. By what signs, do you ask, can they be recognized?
There can be no sign. You can see the light if you have eyes; but
no other faculty can supply the want of eyesight. And hence arise
some remarkable points both of difference from and coincidence with
popular beliefs.
>
In the 'Chartism,' 'Past and Present,' and 'Latter-Day Pamphlets ›
(1839, 1843, and 1850), Carlyle applied his theories to the problems of
the day. They had the disadvantage which generally attaches to the
writings of an outsider in politics. They were, said the average
reader, "unpractical. " Carlyle could not recommend any definite
measures; an objection easy to bring against a man who urges rather
a change of spirit than of particular measures. Yet it is noticeable
that he recommends much that has since become popular. Much of
his language might be used by modern Socialists. In 'Past and
Present, for example (Book iii. , Chapter 8), he gives the princi-
ple of land nationalization. " The great capitalist is to be turned
into a "captain of industry," and government is to undertake to
organize labor, to protect health, and to enforce education. Carlyle
so far sympathizes with the Socialist, not only as agreeing that the
great end of government is the raising of the poor, but as denoun-
cing the laissez-faire doctrine. The old-fashioned English Radical had
regarded all government as a necessary evil, to be minimized as
much as possible. When it had armed the policemen, it had fulfilled
its whole duty. But this, according to Carlyle, was to leave the
"dull multitude" to drift into chaos. Government should rest upon
the loyalty of the lower to the higher. Order is essential; and good
order means the spontaneous obedience to the heaven-sent hero.
He, when found, must supply the guiding and stimulating force.
The Socialist, like Carlyle, desires a strong government, but not the
government of the "hero. " Government of which the moving force
comes from above instead of below will be, he thinks, a government
of mere force. And here occurs the awkward problem to which
Carlyle is constantly referring. He was generally accused of identi-
fying "right" with "might"> Against this interpretation he always
protested. Right and Might, he says often, are in the long run
identical. That which is right and that alone is ultimately lasting.
Your rights are the expression of the divine will; and for that rea-
son, whatever endures must be right. Work lasts so far as it is based


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3240
upon eternal foundations. The might, therefore, is in the long run
the expression of the right. The Napoleonic empire, according to a
favorite illustration, could not last because it was founded upon
injustice. The two tests then must coincide: what is good proves
itself by lasting, and what lasts, lasts because good; but the test of
endurance cannot, it is clear, be applied when it is wanted. Hence
arises an ambiguity which often gives to Carlyle the air of a man
worshiping mere success; when, if we take his own interpretation,
he takes the success to be the consequence, not the cause, of the
rightness. The hero is the man who sees the fact and disregards
the conventional fiction; but for the moment he looks very like the
man who disregards principles and attends to his own interest.
Here again Carlyle approximates to a doctrine to which he was
most averse, the theory of the struggle for existence and the survival
of the fittest. The Darwinian answers in this way Carlyle's prob-
lem, how it is to come to pass that the stupidity of the masses comes
to blunder into a better order? Here and there, as in his accounts
of the way in which the intensely stupid British public managed to
blunder into the establishment of a great empire, Carlyle seems to
fall in with the Darwinian view. That view shocked him because
he thought it mechanical. To him the essence of history was to be
found not in the blind striving of the dull, but in the lives of great
men. They represent the incarnate wisdom which must guide all
wholesome aspiration. History is really the biography of the heroes.
All so-called philosophies of history, attempts to discover general
laws and to dispense with the agency of great men, are tainted with
materialism. They would substitute "blind laws" for the living spirit
which really guides the development of the race. But if you ask how
your hero is to be known, the only answer can be, Know him at
your peril.
Carlyle's most elaborate books, the 'Cromwell' and the 'Fred-
erick,' are designed to give an explicit answer to the "right" and
"might" problem. Carlyle in both cases seems to be toiling amidst
the dust-heaps of some ancient ruin, painfully disinterring the shat-
tered and defaced fragments of a noble statue and reconstructing it
to be hereafter placed in a worthy Valhalla. Cromwell, according
to the vulgar legend, was a mere hypocrite, and Frederick a mere
cynical conqueror. The success of both - that is his intended moral-
was in proportion to the clearness with which they recognized the
eternal laws of the universe. Cromwell probably is the more satis-
factory hero, as more really sympathetic to his admirer. But each
requires an interpreter. Cromwell's gifts did not lie in the direction
of lucid utterance; and Frederick, if he could have read, would cer-
tainly have scorned, the doctrine of his eulogist. Carlyle, that is, has


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3241
to dig out in the actions of great men a true significance, certainly
not obvious to the actors themselves. Their recognition of the
eternal laws was in one case embodied in obsolete formulæ, and in
the other, it might seem, altogether unconscious.
The hero's recog-
nition of divine purposes does not imply then that his own vision is
purged from error, or that his aim is distinctly realized.
He may,
like Mahomet or the Abbot Sampson, be full of superstition. His
"veracity" does not mean that his beliefs are true; only that they
are sincere and such a version of the truth as is possible in his
dialect. This is connected with Carlyle's constant insistence upon
the superiority of silence to speech. The divine light shines through.
many distracting media; it enlightens many who do not consciously
perceive it. It may be recognized because it gives life; because the
work to which it prompts is lasting. But even the hero who tries to
utter himself is sure to interpolate much that is ephemeral, con-
fused, and imperfect; and speech in general represents the mere per-
plexed gabble of men who take words for thought, and raise a
hopeless clamor which drowns the still small voice of true inspira-
tion. If men are mostly fools, their talk is mostly folly; forming a
wild incoherent Babel in which it is hard to pick out the few scat-
tered words of real meaning. Carlyle has been ridiculed for preach-
ing silence in so many words; but then Carlyle was speaking the
truth; and of that, he fully admits, we can never have too much.
The hero may be a prophet, or a man of letters. He is bound to
speak seriously, though not to be literally silent; and his words must
be judged not by the momentary pleasure, but by their ultimate
influence on life.
Carlyle's message to his fellows, which I have tried imperfectly
to summarize, may be condemned on grounds of taste and of moral-
ity. Translated into logical formulæ it becomes inconsistent, and
it embodies some narrow prejudices in exaggerated terms. Yet I
think that it has been useful even by the shock it has given to com-
monplace optimism. It has been far more useful because in his
own dialect, Carlyle — as I think - expresses some vital truths with
surpassing force. Whatever our creeds, religious or political, he may
stimulate our respect for veracity, in the form of respect for honest
work or contempt for hypocritical conventions; our loyalty to all
great leaders, in the worlds both of thought and action; and our
belief that to achieve any real progress, something is required infi-
nitely deeper than any mere change in the superficial arrangements of
society. These lessons are expressed, too, as the merely literary
critic must admit, by a series of historical pictures, so vivid and so
unique in character that for many readers they are in the full sense
fascinating. They are revelations of new aspects of the world, never,
I


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THOMAS CARLYLE
when once observed, to be forgotten. And finally, I may add that
Carlyle's autobiographical writings-in which we must include the
delightful Life of Sterling'-show the same qualities in a shape
which, if sometimes saddening, is profoundly interesting. No man
was more reticent in his life, though he has been made to deliver
a posthumous confession of extraordinary fullness. We hear all the
groans once kept within the walls of Cheyne Row. After making
all allowance for the fits of temper, the harshness of judgment, and
the willful exaggeration, we see at last a man who under extraordi-
nary difficulties was unflinchingly faithful to what he took to be his
vocation, and struggled through a long life, full of anxieties and
vexations, to turn his genius to the best account.
Leche Stephen
LABOR
From Past and Present>
FOR
OR there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in
Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high
calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and
earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with
Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one
more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regula-
tions, which are truth.
The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it.
"Know thyself": long enough has that poor "self" of thine tor-
mented thee; thou wilt never get to "know" it, I believe! Think
it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknow-
able individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it
like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.
It has been written, "An endless significance lies in Work;"
a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared
away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal
the man himself first ceases to be jungle and foul unwholesome
desert thereby. Consider how even in the meanest sorts of
Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real
harmony the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire,
Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like hell-
dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3243
man: but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and
all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their
The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labor in
him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up,
and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!
caves.
In
Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A
formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever
rounder; ranges itself by mere force of gravity into strata, spheri-
cal courses; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World.
What would become of the Earth did she cease to revolve?
the poor old Earth, so long as she revolves, all inequalities,
irregularities, disperse themselves; all irregularities are inces-
santly becoming regular. Hast thou looked on the Potter's
wheel,- one of the venerablest objects; old as the Prophet Ezekiel
and far older? Rude lumps of clay, how they spin themselves
up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes. And
fancy the most assiduous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced
to make dishes, or rather amorphous botches, by mere kneading
and baking! Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human
soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and
spin! Of an idle unrevolving man the kindest Destiny, like
the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead
nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive
coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a botch.
Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-
cornered, amorphous botch,-a mere enameled vessel of dishonor!
Let the idle think of this.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other
blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and
will follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by
noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like
an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows;-draining off
the sour festering water gradually from the root of the remotest
grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruit-
ful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the
meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small!
Labor is Life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his
God-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into
him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all
nobleness,-to all knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much else, so
as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? The knowledge that
soon


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THOMAS CARLYLE
will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature her-
self accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no
other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is
yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in
schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices,
till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, of whatever kind, can be
ended by Action alone. "
see
And again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance,
Openness to light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do
better next time? All these, all virtues, in wrestling with the
dim brute Powers of Fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such
wrestle, there, and elsewhere not at all, thou wilt continually
learn. Set down a brave Sir Christopher in the middle of black
ruined Stone-heaps, of foolish unarchitectural Bishops, red-tape
Officials, idle Nell-Gwynn Defenders of the Faith; and
whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathedral out of all that, yea
or no! Rough, rude, contradictory, are all things and persons,
from the mutinous masons and Irish hodmen up to the idle
Nell-Gwynn Defenders, to blustering red-tape Officials, foolish
unarchitectural Bishops. All these things and persons are there
not for Christopher's sake and his Cathedral's; they are there for
their own sake mainly! Christopher will have to conquer and
constrain all these, if he be able. All these are against him.
Equitable Nature herself, who carries her mathematics and
architectonics not on the face of her, but deep in the hidden
heart of her, Nature herself is but partially for him; will be
wholly against him, if he constrain her not! His very money,
where is it to come from? The pious munificence of England.
lies far-scattered, distant, unable to speak and say, "I am here";
- must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious munificence,
and all help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; impediments,
contradictions manifold, are so loud and near! O brave Sir
Christopher, trust thou in those, notwithstanding, and front all
these; understand all these; by valiant patience, noble effort,
insight, by man's strength, vanquish and compel all these,- and
on the whole, strike down victoriously the last topstone of that
Paul's Edifice; thy monument for certain centuries, the stamp
"Great Man" impressed very legibly on Portland-stone there!
Yes, all manner of help, and pious response from Men of
Nature, is always what we call silent; cannot speak or come to
―――――
—


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3245
light, till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is
at first "Impossible. " In very truth, for every noble work the
possibilities will lie diffused through Immensity; inarticulate,
undiscoverable except to faith. Like Gideon, thou shalt spread
out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether under the
wide arch of Heaven there be any bounteous moisture, or none.
Thy heart and life-purpose shall be as a miraculous Gideon's
fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven; and from the kind
Immensities, what from the poor unkind Localities and town and
country Parishes there never could, blessed dew-moisture to
suffice thee shall have fallen!
Work is of a religious nature:- work is of a brave nature;
which it is the aim of all religion to be. All work of man is as
the swimmer's: a waste ocean threatens to devour him; if he
front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise
defiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it
loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. "It is
so," says Goethe, "with all things that man undertakes in this
world. "
Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king,- Columbus, my hero,
royalest Sea-king of all! it is no friendly environment, this of
thine, in the waste deep waters; around thee mutinous discour-
aged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the equal,
unpenetrated veil of Night. Brother, these wild water-mountains,
bounding from their deep basin (ten miles deep, I am told), are
not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work
than floating thee forward:-and the huge Winds, that sweep
from Ursa-Major to the Tropics and Equators, dancing their
giant-waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they
little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small
shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art
not among articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art
among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howling, wide
as the world here. Secret, far off, invisible to all hearts but
thine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that.
Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad Southwester spend itself,
saving thyself by dexterous science of defense, the while: val-
iantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favor-
ing East, the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt
sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encour-
age: thou wilt swallow down complaint, unreason, weariness,
care


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THOMAS CARLYLE
weakness of others and thyself; - how much wilt thou swallow
down! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than
this Sea, which is but ten miles deep: a Silence unsoundable;
known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, my
World-Soldier, thou of the World Marine-service,- thou wilt have
to be greater than this tumultuous unmeasured World here round
thee is; thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms shalt
embrace it, harness it down; and make it bear thee on, — to
new Americas, or whither God wills!
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES
From Sartor Resartus'
"A$
(
>
S MONTESQUIEU wrote a 'Spirit of Laws,'" observes our
Professor, "so could I write a 'Spirit of Clothes'; thus,
with an Esprit des Lois,' properly an 'Esprit de Cou-
tumes,' we should have an 'Esprit de Costumes. For neither
in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere Acci-
dent, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious operations of
the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavors, an Archi-
tectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are
the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice,
of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in
folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high head-
gear, from amid peaks, spangles, and bell-girdles; swell-out in
starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or
girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an
Agglomeration of four limbs,- will depend on the nature of such
Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or
altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again,
what meaning lies in Color! From the soberest drab to the
high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in
choice of color: if the cut betoken Intellect and Talent, so does
the Color betoken Temper and Heart. In all which, among
nations as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable,
though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect: every
snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-
active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior
order are neither invisible nor illegible.


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THOMAS CARLYLE
3247
"For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy
of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-
evening entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences,
like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me unin-
structive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a
clever infant spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic
Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven? - Let
any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not why I wear such
and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but even why
I am here, to wear and obey anything! -Much therefore, if not
the whole, of that same 'Spirit of Clothes' I shall suppress as
hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and
Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omnis-
cient style, are my humbler and proper province. "
Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has never-
theless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent of field;
at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon.
Selection being indispensable, we shall here glance over his First
Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no
doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost patience
and fairness: at the same time, in its results and delineations, it
is much more likely to interest the Compilers of some Library
of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge
than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part
of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recom-
mended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, "at present
the glory of British Literature"? If so, the Library Editors are
welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.
To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves,
and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,
metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial, and quite antediluvian cast, we
shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval.
Still less have we to do with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom,
according to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore
him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aërial, aquatic, and
terrestrial Devils, "- very needlessly, we think. On this portion
of the Work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon,
or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with
the Nif and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North,
it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction and
depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not


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THOMAS CARLYLE
the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonish-
ment.
But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from
the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the
whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of
Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient
and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to
give us in compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an Orbis
Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus; or view of the costumes of all man-
kind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Anti-
quarian, to the Historian, we
the Historian, we can triumphantly say: Fall to!
Here is learning: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but inex-
haustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons
in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not
carry off.
Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; phylacteries,
stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghan shawls,
trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches,
as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient),
Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought
vividly before us, even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not for-
gotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning,
heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true,
concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out
and thrown aside.
us.
Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching
pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised
The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was
not warmth or decency, but ornament. "Miserable indeed,"
says he, "was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring
fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard
reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a matted
cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He
loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits;
or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses,
lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements, with-
out arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole
possession and defense might not be lost, he had attached a long
cord of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it
with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger
and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but
Decoration (Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase;


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THOMAS CARLYLE
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or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or
natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay,
among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to
Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decora-
tion, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civil-
ized countries.
"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Se-
rene Highness; nay, thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom
Maiden, worthy to glide sylph-like almost on air, whom thou
lovest, worshipest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, symboli-
cally taken, she is, has descended, like thyself, from that same
hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of
the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth
sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in
Time!